Pictures!! :)
This is Zoe, before the surgery and before her leg became a serious problem.
Zoe 2 days after her surgery.
Zoe
Living on three legsProgress
First I want to thank everyone who left comments, and since I am new to the site Im not sure how to directly reply to each individual but reading your comments was very uplifting. For everyone who said to upload pictures, I am definitely going to do that tonight!
This last week has had its ups and downs, but mainly its up since I have seen drastic improvement in Zoe’s recovery. After a little bit of a struggle with getting the dosage of her pain meds figured out Zoe started to improve tremendously. Seeing her get around on her three legs is amazing, and I didnt think I would be suprised because I was used to seeing her on three, but now that the problem leg is gone she moves with such ease. Zoe wants to run and jump and play, but still has to wait until Wednesday to get her stitches out, after that my girl will be back to her normal self!
Zoe got to visit a home for the elderly and had a great time, the folks there loved seeing her and hearing her story. Since a lot of these people there are doing rehab for broken hips and knees, in a strange way seeing a dog recovering so well from an amputation made them extremely happy.
Her swelling is just about gone, and the bruising has vanished.
I am so excited for her full recovery, so I can see my girl happy and healthy!!
Thanks again everyone for the support! I hope to figure out how to work the blog better so I can communicate a little better 🙂
Getting Zoe
Zoe is my 3 year old American Eskimo mix, she is a sweet little girl (noisey, but sweet none the less), and from the moment I got her she been a handful. I was 18 when I got Zoe, and was pretty oblivious to the whole rescue concept, so I bought her from a pet store. I know this is highly frowned upon but looking back I don’t regret a thing, because I would’nt have my baby today, also I do see it like I did rescue her from a horrible situation. Zoe was only months old when I got her, hardly able to be away from her mother, she looked like a little ball of fluff. When I got her home there was tons of things wrong with Zoe, kennel cough and pink eye were the two big issues at hand and once they got taken care of other little things started to surface. I noticed a deformity in her tail that makes the tip go on a 90 degree angle, and she walked with a bit of a limp, and as she grew it seemed that her one hind leg didn’t. X-Rays were to expensive so I just had her checked and the doctor said his best guess was just a growth deformity and that I could try injections. I declined the injections because I would have to keep her still for weeks to let the meds work, and she wasn’t in pain and was a happy girl. Also keeping her still would have been completely impossible!
Time went on with my little girl and things were great, she was always happy and didn’t have a care in the world. Until Easter of 2011 Zoe started showing signs of pain, and her leg swelled almost the size of a soft ball (she is a small girl weighing in at 13lbs). Zoe was not using her leg, now this wasnt too bad because Zoe never really used it for anything other then balance and what we at home liked to call a kick stand. Now she was showing signs of pain and her kick stand was now just a lame limb that just hung by her side. I had to take Zoe to the local emergency vet, this time I got X-Rays. What they revealed wasn’t too completely devistating but it was pretty hard. Apparenlty before I got Zoe she had a fracture in her leg, at what would have been the growth plate on her when she was a pup. Beings that I have the belief that she was a puppy mill puppy, we think she was just left to fend for herself. The fracture healed in such an absurd way there is no good way I can explain it in text, but I can try. Instead of her femur healing in a complete straight line (a 180 degree angle I guess I could call it) it healed at a 90 degree angle then bent at the knee. I don’t know if that makes any sense but either way she had a bad break and for some unforseen reason it was just now effecting her leg. After over a week of trying to get control of the pain and swelling, I could’nt handle seeing her hurt so I took her to a specialist. This is when amputation was suggested.
This is in a nut shell is how I landed where I am today. After a week of pulling together a source of payment, I scheduled an appointment for Zoe. So on May 10, Zoe had her leg amputated. This is now her fourth day home, and recovery is extremely hard. Shes already got the tripawd thing down, since technically she has been one her whole life, but getting through the healing process is so trying. Overall I have high hopes for once she heals and is off her meds, and I cant wait to just be able to see her free of pain since its been about a month of hurt for her. The wait is just hard.